An excursion or two from Oxford I remember this autumn: one to Downside, where it was always a happiness to go and spend a church-festival with my Benedictine brethren; another to Eton, where I gazed with dismay on the new school-hall with its unsightly dome, and wondered if this was really the best the Committee of Taste could achieve by way of South African War Memorial.[9] I met afterwards quite a contingent of Scotsmen (Arthur Hay, the Duke of Roxburghe's brother, etc.) at luncheon with the Irish Guards at Victoria Barracks, where I used to breakfast of a Sunday morning--a dissipation forbidden, I believe, to modern Etonians--with an uncle in the Scots Fusilier Guards, in my own school days. I went to London that evening to dine with, and read afterwards a paper on "Jerusalem of To-day" to, the Guild of SS. Gregory and Luke, my host being Sir John Knill, Sheriff of London, who was two years later to occupy the civic chair, as his excellent father had done before him. On another evening I attended our Westminster Dining-club, to hear Fr. R. H. Benson read us an essay on "The Value of Fiction"--interesting, as coming from a successful novelist, and of course brilliant; but I agreed with only about half of it. Ninian Crichton Stuart had engaged me to go and {130} support him at the St. Andrew's Day banquet of the Caledonian Society of Cardiff, the suffrages of which city he was at that time wooing as Conservative candidate, much assisted by his clever and charming wife. I stayed with them at their pretty home near Llandaff, and we motored in to the patriotic banquet, which began at 6.30 and lasted nearly five hours! I proposed the principal toast, and had of course no difficulty in showing (as one of the newspaper reports remarked) that all the chief posts in the Empire--political, ecclesiastical, legal and administrative, were, with the most insignificant exceptions, held by Scotsmen. Bagpipes, of course, skirled and whisky flowed freely; and the national enthusiasm reached its height when the haggis was borne round the hall in procession, carried by the white-clad chef and preceded by the pipe-major, playing his best and loudest in honour of the "chief of pudding race." I left Llandaff next morning, Ringan, Lady Ninian's pretty baby, crowing good-bye to me from his mother's arms,[10] and spent an hour or two in Cardiff with Bishop Hedley, who expressed his hope that I would help Kennard at Oxford as long as I could, and would ultimately succeed him as chaplain. We visited together the new and splendid town-hall, the finest municipal building I had ever seen. The Oxford term ended in the following week, {131} and I made my way north to Fort Augustus, where I found discussion in progress as whether we should or should not sell our house and estate of Ardachie, for which we had several good offers. I said yes; for the place, though not without its attractions, had been altogether more of